As people on social media may have noticed, I have been traveling a lot of late. To add to that, I had no wifi in my hotel room in Germany, so I was online a lot less than usual for a convention. Consequently catch-up is required. I owe you folks a post on the Eurocon, and I still owe you one about the British Museum’s LGBT History Trail. I’ll be at home for a few days, so hopefully I can get those done. In the meantime you’ll get some quick posts just so you don’t forget me entirely.
Where’s Cheryl?
Fringe Tonight
I’m back from the Eurocon in Dortmund and have much to report, but I have to dash off to Exeter for work today. This evening I will be hosting BristolCon Fringe, featuring Peter Newman and Kate Coe. Full details here. See some of you then.
Historical Fiction at the Zoo
As a kid I was addicted to the Animal Magic show on children’s BBC, fronted by Johnny Morris. As the older readers among you may remember, it was set in Bristol Zoo. Little did I imagine that I would one day end up being on display in the zoo myself.
No, don’t worry, this is nothing to do with my having cat genes. Nor do I expect to be put in a cage. Rather I will be speaking at Creative Histories, a conference on the intersection of history and fiction. My paper is going to be on “Challenging Colonialism through Steampunk”. Also on the programme is my OutStories colleague, Andy Foyle, who will be talking about telling LGBT history through maps.
The conference is at the end of July (and I’ll be going straight from there down to Brighton for Trans Pride – yes, I know, I’m mad). I’m looking forward to it. If anyone has any recommendations for anti-colonialist steampunk besides Everfair, Buffalo Soldier and Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion, please let me know.
Mad Week
Yeah, I know, I have been quiet for a while. Things have been busy.
I left you folks on Wednesday last week after having done a radio show. On Thursday morning I did training for a bunch of PHSE teachers in Bristol, then got on a train for London.
I accidentally ran into Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer on Thursday evening, which was lovely, but my main purpose for being there was to spend Friday at the Stonewall offices being trained to do role model events at schools. It was a lot of fun, and I met some really great people, all of whom will be fabulous role models.
After the training I spent a couple of hours in the British Museum checking out their LGBT History exhibit. There is some good material in there, but it could be a lot better. When I get time I will do a proper post about it. Then I spent a whole lot of money in Forbidden Planet, as one does.
I was up early on Saturday and off down to Egham where I was speaking at a conference on Rethinking Gender at Royal Holloway. I got to meet Justin Bengry, the mastermind behind the Notches blog. People seemed entertained by my tales of queer Romans, even the Italians. Then it was back home.
On Sunday I was in Bristol for Borderless, a one-day event put on by the feminist cooperative, See It From Her, which exists to improve the ways that women and non-binary people are portrayed in the media. I got to chair a panel on Identity, which had some amazing participants.
It would have been nice to get home in time for the Canadian Grand Prix and collapse in front of that, but instead I got home rather later and fell asleep.
June is going to be like that a lot. I know, it is entirely my own fault.
Today on Ujima – Dinosaurs, Afrofuturism, Psychology & Feminism
It was radio day again today. I think I had a great bunch of guests on Women’s Outlook. Hopefully you do too.
We began with DB Redfern from the Bristol Museums Service telling us all about the fabulous new dinosaur exhibit they have open this summer. Actually it is not strictly a dinosaur thing, because the star attraction, Doris the Pliosaurus, was a sea dweller. She might have eaten dinosaurs, though. Anyway, she was a magnificent monster: as long as a bus with teeth the size of bananas. Doris would have eaten great white sharks as snacks. DB and I had a great discussion, covering important topics such as dinosaur poop and whether Nessie exists. Kids of all ages will love this one.
After the news I was joined by Zahra Ash-Harper and Edson Burton to discuss the Afrofuturism event, Afrometropolis, that I attended a couple of weeks ago. We had a great chat about what Aforfuturism, and an African-centered future, might mean. I got in a plug for Worldcon 75, Nalo and Karen. I do hope we get more events like this in Bristol.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
For the second hour I was joined my a new friend, Clare Mehta, who is a psychology professor from Boston. She’s doing some really interesting work on human ideas of gender and how they are affected by social settings. This all harks back to some of the things that Cordelia Fine was talking about in Testosterone Rex. Fascinatingly, your social environment, and the sort of things that you are doing, can affect your hormone levels. And yes, women do have testosterone in their bodies, and men have estrogen.
Also in that segment I had a pre-recorded interview with Nimco Ali that I did when she was in town doing a talk on the campaign to end Female Genital Mutilation. One of the things she talks about in the interview is having to leave Bristol because she was getting death threats. Ironically today on Twitter she was talking about getting death threats for standing as a Women’s Equality Party candidate. Hopefully once the election is over I can catch up with her again and talk about her experiences as a candidate.
To go with the interview I played the wonderful song, “My Clitoris”, produced by a local charity. I had to check the OfCom regulations carefully for that, but apparently it is perfectly OK to say “vagina” and “clitoris” on the radio. Thank goodness for that, because if we can’t talk openly about this stuff then we are never going to put an end to FGM.
My final guests were Byrony and Liza from See It From Her, a wonderful new group that exists to promote women and non-binary people in the media. They are putting on a one-day event called Borderless on Sunday, and it is sort of a Women’s Outlook co-production because both Yaz and I are on the programme chairing panels. Yaz is doing the one on racism, and I’m doing the one on identity. It is a free event, but you do need to book via Eventbrite so that they can keep an eye on the numbers. Even if you are not interested in what Yaz and I are doing, do come anyway because food is being provided by Kalpna’s Woolf’s amazing 91 Ways project. There’s lots of other stuff too. The full programme is on the Eventbrite page.
You can listen to the second hour of the show here.
The playlist for today’s show was as follows:
- Whitney Houston – Love will save the day
- George Clinton – Walk the Dinosaur
- Janelle Monae – Dance Apocalyptic
- Sun Ra – Blues at Midnight
- Integrate – My Clitoris
- Michael Jackson – Human Nature
- Meet Your Feet – World Party
- O Jays – Love Train
And because the video is so good (and we had to cut the song a little short) here is the You Tube version of “My Clitoris”.
In The Papers
The nice people at Bristol 24/7 have a new featuring up and running in which they interview interesting people who have a connection to the city. This week said “interesting” person is me. You can find the article here.
Obviously I’m very grateful to Caragh and the rest of the B24/7 for this. Caragh’s job at the paper is community outreach, so I’m expecting to be working a lot more with her in the coming months, both on LGBT issues and through Ujima. (For the benefit on non-Celtic readers, her name is pronounced “Kara”, like Supergirl.)
Normally I try to go easy on the egoboo stuff here, but I’d be grateful if the article got a lot of traffic because that will help make the case for B24/7 having more LGBT+ content.
A Trip Into The Past
Today I have been in Southampton. I was there because I needed a university library to do some research, and that’s the only one I can get into easily these days, due to being an alumnus.
So I spent a happy day browsing the stacks for books about Roman eunuchs, and duly found a number of them, which was very useful.
I also got to see how the place had changed in the 35 years or so since I was last there. Parts of it were still very familiar. The library, the student union and the chemistry building are still where they always were, but the bookshop has mysteriously migrated up onto Burgess Road near where the oceanography building used to be. There is also a lot of new build. This has had the effect of diluting the maritime theme of the campus, and I think removing a lot of green space. Still, time can’t stand still. It was good to see the place thriving (and to see a lot more women and non-white students than in my day).
While the day was very useful, it could have been so much better if it were not for the disaster that is academic publishing. No university library takes paper copies of journals these days. They are all online, and you pay for access per student and staff member. There are very strict controls over who can access them, even though they are all “in the library”. Even worse, they don’t seem to buy paper books any more. New books seem to be mostly held only in electronic form and on license. This makes it next to impossible for anyone who isn’t either a member of staff or a student to access anything in an academic library.
Fortunately I can get access to a lot of journals through J-STOR, though I often have to pay for them. Books are more difficult. These days new academic books go for between £80 and £100. I can’t afford that. I’d start to think seriously about Helen Marshall’s MA in science fiction because at least then I’d be a student, except I can’t afford £7k in tuition fees either (or the time to do the course).
Knowledge, we guards it jealously, my precious.
On TV Tonight
This week is Mental Heath Awareness Week in the UK. Because of this the nice folks at Bristol MIND have been asked to be on local TV to talk about their new trans+ helpline. The TV people wanted an actual trans person to talk to, and as I had done all of the training for the helpline volunteers I got asked.
I will be on the Crunch the Week show with Steve LeFevre from 7:00pm tonight, along with Liz Sorapure of Bristol MIND. We are apparently the first item on. Made in Bristol TV is available on cable throughout the South West so you don’t have to be living in Bristol to watch, though you do need something like Sky.
A Day at the Seaside
This afternoon Jo Hall had a signing at the delightful Books on the Hill store in Clevedon. Being a loyal publisher, I went along to support her. This also gave me a reason to visit Clevedon, a seaside town on the North Somerset coast just south of Bristol.
One reason for wanting to go is that the town is the birthplace of Jan Morris, a pioneering trans woman and brilliant writer. I don’t think there is a blue plaque or anything. Probably you can’t get one until you are dead. But Jan deserves one.
Clevedon is most famous, however, for its pier, which the poet, Sir John Betjeman, once described as the most beautiful in the world. As you’ll see from the picture above, it is a funny-looking old thing. It was built in Victorian times when steamships were still a common means of getting along and across the Severn Estuary. (If you look under all those clouds you can just make out Wales, and with better focus you’d be able to see Newport.)
Perhaps the oddest thing about the pier is its height. Why, you might think, is it perched so far above the water? Well, it isn’t. Clevedon has a maximum tidal range of 47 feet, second only to the Bay of Fundy in Canada. It ought to be a good place to build a tidal power installation, but George Osborne decided it would be better to borrow billions from the Chinese to pay the French to build a new nuclear station down the coast at Hinkley Point instead. Presumably Brexit will put an end to all that and the government will re-open some coal mines instead. Get all those Welsh people off benefits and back down the pits. That’ll teach them to vote Labour, eh?
Which reminds me, my colleague Yaz did a great show on Wednesday, and among here guests were some people from Coal Action talking about this campaign. Aberthaw power station directly affects the air quality in Bristol, so it is a matter of concern to us as well as to people in Glamorgan.
Introducing the Twilight People App #TDOV
Today is the international Trans Day of Visibility. I’m spending the day in London at a Trans*Code hackathon, kindly hosted at the offices of CapGemini (whom I used to work for many decades ago). I’ve spent the day working on an app for the Twilight People project. This is something I started at last year’s Trans*Code, and an initial version of the app went live in the Google Play store today. You can find it here.
The first release of the app is very simple because I needed something I could guarantee worked. I plan to add features to it given a bit of time. Also if there are any trans people of faith out there who would like they stories featured in it, we’d love to hear from you. Currently the app is only available for Android. I have a working Windows version which hopefully we can release soon. Thanks to my new pal, Tom Parker of Oliver Wyman (who is here as a mentor), I have been testing the iOS version today. It works fine on a simulator on Tom’s Mac, but Apple charge a lot more for developer accounts than Google or Microsoft so it will be down to the nice people at Liberal Judaism as to whether we can afford to ship that version.
Interviewed in Fusion
Yesterday I happened to tweet that I couldn’t join in the Day Without A Woman strike because I had trans awareness training to do. Somewhat to my surprise, I was approached by a journalist and asked for more information. You can see the results of that here (scroll down).
Nice job Isha, thank you.
And Another One – WEP Bristol Fundraiser
Yes, I know, total overload. But this one is happening in Bristol on the evening after the gig at the Watershed, and they only want me talking for 5 minutes. I can do that. Besides, very good cause. Also it is an open mic. So if you are in the Bristol area, and identify as a woman, please come along and tell us what sort of things you want. You can book (free) tickets here. It’s more on the door, so book now.
February Events Update – Young People’s Panel
Tuesday night at Bristol University was fabulous, and I met some great people. That may result in some more events later this year.
But today’s news is that I will be chairing the “Language and Representation Within LGBT+ Culture” event at M-Shed on the evening of the 22nd. This is being staged by the Young Festival of Ideas and Freedom Youth. It is their show, I’ll just be there to keep things running smoothly and (because young people are massively tech-savvy) manage the social media input during the event.
You can find out more about the event here, and book (free) tickets here.
I have another event booked now as well, but I’m not sure if it is open to the public so I can’t say anything yet.
LGBT History Month Is Underway
It is all go from now until the beginning of March. This is probably my busiest week. Here’s what’s happening.
On Tuesday evening I am taking part in a panel on LGBT+ History, local and national, at Bristol University. Details here.
On Thursday evening I’ll be in Exeter to talk to Surat-Shaan Knan about the fabulous Twilight People project. Details here.
On Saturday I am back in Exeter to speak at the launch event for their weekend of history talks.
And on Sunday I am giving one of those talks.
If you want to know what I’ll be talking about on Sunday, this post gives some background. (Historian and archaeologist friends, please note that this marketing blurb.)
A Week in Barcelona
Hello, remember me?
I know, I have been very quiet this past week. That’s because I have been very busy. The conference days were long, partly because we had so much good material, and partly because, this being Barcelona, we allowed 1.5 hours for lunch. The days tended to finish at around 7:00pm, after which we’d go out for a glass or two of wine, and then go for dinner. By the time we were done it was time for bed.
The lack of blogging wasn’t helped by the fact that my hotel was fairly basic. The wifi was good but there was no desk so I tended to just check email then drop offline again. I’m not complaining. The room was clean, comfortable and ideally situated just a few minutes walk from the university. It was also very cheap. That was ideal for somewhere I would be spending very little time in, but needed for sleep.
My final excuse for not blogging more is that much of the material was very esoteric. You folks probably won’t be interested in an in-depth analysis of the names that Babylonians gave their children, a list of all of the known scribes from the Assyrian empire and their functions, or Talmudic deliberations on whether being breastfed made a male baby unclean. However, here are a few things I found out about that may be more amusing.
First up, thanks to Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme for introducing me to the Brick Testament. This is a recreation of the Bible in Lego dioramas. Naturally it reproduces a whole lot of weirdness from the Old Testament, including this explanation of when it is OK to have your son stoned to death and this rather NSFW depiction of male sex workers. It is also a useful reminder of just how many people the Israelite god managed to slaughter during the course of the narrative.
Second, thanks to Amy Gansell for introducing me to the recreation of the royal palace at Nimrud created by Learning Sites, Inc.. This palace was built by Ashurnasirpal II and material from it is available in numerous museums around the world. There is also a 2D walk-through available here via a Firefox plugin.
The video below is a 2D fly-through of the place, but it is also available as a VR experience using Oculus Rift. When Amy first encountered the project there were no women shown at all in the recreation. Thankfully Learning Sites has been willing to work with her to develop a representation of Ashurnasirpal’s queen, Mullissu-mukanniÅ¡at-Ninua and some of her servants.
Since the recreation project was begun, what remains of the actual site at Nimrud has apparently been destroyed by Daesh.
Hola World
This is a very quick update from Barcelona. The weather is much better than in England. The food and the wine are great. The University of Barcelona is as beautiful as ever. I am spending much of my time apologizing to young European academics about the awfulness of Brexit. Even the Americans are less embarrassed than me because Trump is a vague and nebulous threat whereas for some of these people, or their friends and colleagues, Brexit means losing your home and possibly being separated from your spouse.
Anyway, the conference is great. I haven’t learned a huge amount, but I have confirmed a few things I was unsure about which thankfully means I don’t have to do any massive re-writes of my talks for LGBT History Month. I’m delighted at the number of people who want to learn about trans theory to help them with their work.
Fleeing the Country
Well, not exactly. I’m going to an academic conference in Barcelona this week. It is all about gender in the ancient near east and sounds absolutely fascinating to me. Your mileage may vary.
I should be online a fair amount while I am away, at least from the phone for which I still get free roaming while we are part of the EU. I may bore y’all with history stuff.
It will be warmer than it is here. I’ll try to pick up a few tips about resisting fascists while I am away. I think they know a thing or two about that in Barcelona.
Brief Restaurant Recommendation
I’m in Oxford. I’ll be spending all tomorrow doing training, and much of Wednesday visiting bookshops and libraries. But because we have a 9:30am start tomorrow I am staying in a hotel on expenses, which is nice.
The hotel, by the way, is a Holiday Inn on the ring road by the airport turnoff. It’s very standard, but very comfortable and the hot tub, sauna and steam room are nice.
It is, however, a long way out of town, and there’s not a lot in the way of restaurants immediately obvious. Also Berkeley hadn’t had lunch and was ravenous. So we took ourselves into town. Our new colleague, Aaron, had found a restaurant he said did good Chinese, Malaysian and Singapore cuisine. It was in Walton Street in the Jherico district. We managed to park OK not too far away and wandered up towards the restaurant. We passed several other places on the way, all of which looked nice and were fairly empty. Then we got to the place Aaron had found, and it was heaving. Fortunately they had a downstairs dining room and were able to seat us.
It was fabulous. I had beef rendang with coconut rice; Berkeley had a Szechuan lamb dish with egg fried rice; Aaron had chicken satay; and we shared some crispy duck for starters. Oh, and Berkeley had soup because ravenous. All of it was very good.
Getting back to the hotel I checked the place out on the web, and the first thing I see on their website is enthusiastic recommendations from Giles Coren and Ken Hom. Well duh!
Nice job, Aaron. And for the rest of you, should you happen to be in Oxford, a very fine place to eat is Zheng.
As a special bonus, the restaurant is indeed named after one of China’s most famous people: Admiral Zheng-He. Who was, I note, a eunuch, and therefore in many people’s view a non-binary gendered person.
Travel Planning
If you have asked me about my availability recently I have probably said something along the lines of, “not in February, please”. That’s LGBT History Month, and that tends to mean a lot of travel. Today I have been doing some booking. Here’s what it looks like.
Jan 31 – Feb 4 I shall be in Barcelona for a conference at the university on gender in the ancient near east. That will feed directly into my presentations as part of the official LGBT History Month events.
Feb 11-12 I am in Exeter where I am speaking both at the launch event on the Saturday and on the festival day on the Sunday.
Feb 15 I have marked in as the Ujima show devoted to LGBTHM.
Feb 18 I am in Bournemouth doing the same trans people in the ancient world talk that I gave in Exeter on the 12th.
There will probably be some stuff going on in Bristol. I know M-Shed will be busy on the 18th, and on the 22nd. I have the 25th reserved in my diary for a possible talk on trans people in art down the ages.
Mar 3-5 I am in Liverpool for the LGBTHM academic conference.
And that is why (Ceri, Adele) I will not be going to London on Mar 10-12 for the Women of the World conference. I will be asleep that weekend.
Transgender Mythbusting Comes to Bristol
On Saturday I will be running a workshop at LaDIYFest, a fabulous intersectional feminist event. The workshop will be an extended version of the Transgender Mythbusting thing I ran at the Womens’ Equality Party conference with a lot more time for detail and discussion. As with the WEP event, the point of the workshop is to provide feminist campaigners with the tools and information that they need to counter the nonsense that you find in the mass media, and the lies spread by anti-trans activists.
Attendance is free, though they will have a donations jar to help with costs. According to the schedule I am on at 2:45pm, though I’m planning to be there before that because the other sessions look really good.
In the evening there is a music event at Roll for the Soul, the bicycle cafe in the center of town. Ren Stedman is playing, and I hope to be there for his set. You do need to buy a ticket for that, but it is worth it just for Ren.